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The Question (ID Number 668)...

Why did you single out the Roman Catholic church as B's antagonist in The Story of B?

...and the response:

I singled it out because, virtually alone among all other Christian sects, it has refused to curry favor by waffling on fundamental issues on which it has already ruled. Other sects have bent with the prevailing winds of public sentiment to countenance such things as divorce, birth control, abortion, female and gay clergy, and gay sexuality. Only a fundamentalist Roman Catholic religious order, with strong roots planted in the Scholastic tradition, would be able to perceive and articulate to itself what a threat B's teachings pose. The clergy of a modern liberal sect would merely shrug off B, saying something like, "Well, everyone's entitled to his own opinion and his own conscience."